DAGMAR Model

Introduction DAGMAR is Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. It is basically an approach to advertising planning and a precise method for selecting and quantifying goals and for using those goals to measure performance. An advertising objective involves a communication task, intended to create awareness, impart information, develop attitudes or induce action. In the DAGMAR approach, the communication task is based on a specific model of the communication process, as shown below.

Communication Process in DAGMAR Approach The model suggests that before the acceptance of a product by an individual, there is a series of mental steps which the individual goes through. At some point of time, the individual will be unaware of the product or offer in the market. The initial communication task of the advertising activity is to increase consumer awareness of the product or offer. The second step of the communication process is comprehension of the product or offer and involves the target audience learning something about the product or offer. What are its specific characteristics and appeals, including associated imagery and feelings? In what way does it differ from its competitors? Whom is it supposed to benefit?

The third step is the attitude (or conviction) step and intervenes between comprehension and final action. The action phase involves some overt move on the part of the buyer such as trying a brand for the first time, visiting a showroom, or requesting information. The whole communication process is a bit more complex. And under different circumstances, it may differ slightly, but the basic concept revolves around what is mentioned in the paragraphs above. The DAGMAR approach emphasises the communication task of advertising. The second important concept of the approach is that the advertising goal be specific. It should be a written, measurable task involving a starting point, a defined audience, and a fixed time period. Now that the basic theory is told, how to apply in your specific situation? We are mainly traders dealing with products from other reputed and not so reputed companies and sitting here, we cannot dictate the company's advertising strategy. So, we look forward to developing a model which can reasonably applied in our case. Let's build your scenario and have the advertising brief: You are a dealer or distributor and want to sell products of a reputed company. You don't have to worry about the image and perception of the brand. You are just worried that customers might not want to buy from you. And, instead, buy from a competition shop next to yours dealing with the same kinds of products. In such a case, what should be done? What should be your advertising objective? Should you have a advertising strategy? What would be the ingredients of such an advertising plan? What should be the budget? Let's discuss some of the issues related to your promotion/advertising related activity. You must first distinguish between advertising from your marketing objectives. And DAGMAR is aimed at setting your advertising goals/ plannings and not marketing goals. A Measurable Objective The DAGMAR approach sounds impractical once we talk of measurements, surveys, questionnaires and all that staff. After all, who'd go for a survey! But, as the approach emphasises the importance of objectives, we must have some form of measurement to indicate the effectiveness of the advertising/ promotional campaign. So if you are thinking of a promotional campaign, it must have an objective. And an objective that is measurable. For a yellow page advertisement, the measurement could be the number of phone calls received before and after the ad was published or the number of referrals through yellow pages. Many of our advertisers are pleasantly surprised by orders/ offers received

through phone calls, which were later found to be through advertisements in yellow pages. Now, the question is, if they did not advertise in the yellow pages, would they have received those orders/ offers? That's another matter, though. Your measurable objective must be written, clear and unambiguous. Goals like 'Improve store image'/Increase awareness of our store' etc. are too vague and do not lead to anywhere. A good starting point to work on the goal would be: Increase awareness of our store by 10% Notice the missing full stop? We still have to construct our campaign objective. A Conceivable Benchmark When we talk of measurement, its both current and future. We must, first, know where we stand now, and know in quantitative terms. The current position is your starting point which will help in establishing a goal and selecting a campaign to reach it. Getting more customers into your store might not be an optimal goal, if you already receive a large number of visitors. So, have an objective analysis of where you are and then start working on your objective. If you know that already many customers are visiting your store, you may probably have some idea of their behaviour related to purchases. (If you don't, that's a pity). Now you know that your advertising can be aimed at converting your visitors to customers. Let's reconstruct our goal now: Increase awareness of our store from the current level of 20% to 30% Well-Defined Target Audience Perhaps, the first lesson you should learn in marketing is target audience. Not everyone is going to buy your product. Not everyone needs your product, its another matter that some needs are latent and needs to be aroused. So, identify your target audience, to whom you are going to aim your ad campaign. Most likely, this is going to be your user segment as well. As an example, if you are selling premium car accessories, you should target customers who are either stylish, sophisticated or own premium cars. Working further on the advertising goal, we now have: Increase awareness of our store from the current level of 20% to 30% among the owner of product X

Fixed time period Your advertising campaign should not run for eternity, without having milestones to achieve over the future time frame. You should have a fixed time period, six months or a year, within which you should aim at attaining certain goals. There should also be some time allocated td to test the campaign, make amendments, if required to the campaign. A time should be fixed upon the arrival of which the campaign can be evaluated. So, we finally have our advertising goal as follows: Increase awareness of our store from the current level of 20% to 30% among the owner of product X before the launch of product Y which is expected within the next six months.